Honey Bees and Climate Change Animations

  • Released Thursday, August 20, 2009
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Flowering plants rely on pollinators like honey bees to reproduce. Honey bees, in turn, rely on flowering plants for food - in the form on nectar and pollen. The two animations below illustrate how an earlier springtime could cause plants and pollinators to shift out of sync.

To see the video "Feeling the Sting of Climate Change" that these animations were created for, visit entry #10481

This short animation illustrates two scenarios. The first depicts plants blooming at the same time bees emerge to forage for nectar and pollen. The second depicts an earlier bloom, where flowers bloom before bees are ready to forage. The flowers miss out on getting pollinated, and the bees miss their chance to gather nectar and pollen.

This longer animation depicts the same two scenarios as the short animation. In addition, relative hive weights are shown. Hives gain weight when bees successfully gather nectar and pollen to produce honey.

For More Information

See http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/beekeepers.html

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center and Ivy Flores (UMBC)

This page was originally published on Thursday, August 20, 2009.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:54 PM EDT.

Series

This visualization can be found in the following series: